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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27799768">handmade heaven</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/laehys/pseuds/laehys'>laehys</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>NCT (Band)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Angels, Angel/Human Relationships, Angels, Angst, M/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 15:41:54</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,393</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27799768</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/laehys/pseuds/laehys</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>It burns. It still burns even after all that time.</p><p>It doesn’t matter how long he'd been among the mortals, walking around while stuck with that human carcass. It still consumes him and it makes him feel sick — a heavy feeling that sinks into the bottom of his belly, wrapping around his guts, eating him from the inside out.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Huang Ren Jun/Na Jaemin</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>54</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>handmade heaven</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/honebone/gifts">honebone</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>this is for aya who made this idea grow inside my brain and !! finally !!! here it is !!!<br/>thank u to val and mash (who also helped A Lot) &lt;33</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It burns. It still burns even after all that time.</p><p>It doesn’t matter how long he'd been among the mortals, walking around while stuck with that human carcass. It still consumes him and it makes him feel <em>sick</em> — a heavy feeling that sinks into the bottom of his belly, wrapping around his guts, eating him from the inside out.</p><p>The need to unleash his powers, to go beyond that fragile frame that comported his holiness, to be <em>more</em>... it ached, it stung, it hurt.</p><p>Jaemin looks up at the sky and the feeling only grows stronger. He feels the absence of being more than what he is now, to be bigger, to be <em>whole</em>. It's a kind of homesickness that he can't stomach — bitter taste on the back of his throat, scratched skin around the emptiness between his shoulder blades, a burning underneath his skin, vibrating in place and begging, <em>begging</em>, to be released.</p><p>"Are you feeling okay? Or is it one of the bad days again?"</p><p>Jaemin turns on his side, looking away from the open window and the purple sky, a sunrise slowly approaching and taking over what was once a starry night.</p><p>Laying down on his side, with his cheek squished against the pillow, eyes half-lidded and glazed over, Renjun looks like the image of pure innocence. And Jaemin knows all about that; he knows about innocence, he knows about purity, he knows about sin and all that it entails.</p><p>Now he knows all about carnal desires, knows about craving something unholy, about needing it so much that even if you try to ignore it, it just carves a deep space between your ribs and rests there. Jaemin knows all about it.</p><p>"I do not know yet," he answers, easily, because it's the truth. Only the rest of the day will tell and even he can't predict the future. He looks at the sky and longs for something he isn't sure he'll ever have again, but he looks at Renjun and <em>aches.</em> "As most days usually are."</p><p>Renjun hums, eyes closing shut for a brief second before he opens them again, blinking all sleepily and incredibly endearing. Jaemin knew the technicalities of that: you are cute and some people give you things. Humans weren't cute; they were greedy creatures, capable of terrible, awful things, unafraid of destroying even their own. Renjun was the only exception to that — he was soft, but strong; resilient and dedicated, but knowing when to step down. And cute.</p><p>Renjun seemed to be the exception to a lot of things with him, Jaemin muses.</p><p>"You're always so... so cryptic," Renjun says, yawning at the end of his phrase, rubbing at his eyes with the palm of his hands. "Sometimes I don't get <em>at all </em>what you're saying."</p><p>Jaemin doesn't answer. He only stares at Renjun, feeling around him the thrumming of life waking up. The birds were starting to sing, the cars down below, on the street, beeping and making all kinds of noises; the city was coming back to life and Jaemin could feel the change in the air.</p><p>"Your hair is getting long again," Renjun comments, offhandedly. "Do you want to cut it or let it grow? I think you'd look good with long hair."</p><p>"Your eyes are closed," Jaemin replies. "You are not even looking at me in this instant."</p><p>A small, soft smile appears on Renjun's lips. Jaemin can't look away. With his eyes closed, eyelashes fanning out over his cheekbones, rosy lips curling up, Renjun looks like something out of a dream. "I can see you in my head," he says, drawling out the words as sleep starts to take over his mind, making his speech something heavier. "I can picture you clearly and I know you'd be just as beautiful as you are right now."</p><p>"Do you?" Jaemin asks, mouth dry. He leans forward, face closer to Renjun's. Renjun's lips twitch as he holds back a bigger smile, as if he could feel Jaemin getting closer. Maybe he could. Jaemin didn't know. "Can you picture my image clearly inside your mind?"</p><p>Renjun makes another humming noise, snuggling against his pillow and refusing to open his eyes. "Of course I can. Sometimes you're normal and just standing there, looking all pretty. Other times you're burning and almost glowing, all soft and hazed at the edges, eyes golden; you shine so brightly I can't look at you."</p><p>It eases a bit of the itch under his skin, fills him up in a way he didn't know he needed. Jaemin relishes in all of those words, swallowing all of them down and letting them rest inside of him, spreading throughout his body.</p><p>"Tell me more."</p><p>Renjun only smiles. He rubs his face against the soft pillow, letting out a little noise, but cracks open his eyes, looking at him with a confused gaze until he could properly focus on his figure. "Narcissism isn't fit for an angel," he says. "I think it fits in one of the seven deadly sins. I'm not sure—I can't really think right now, you know," he finishes with a yawn, blinking twice before widening his eyes and rubbing his face with one hand.</p><p>An angel. Was Jaemin even one anymore? He didn't know that.</p><p>Purity was something lost long ago in a mind filled with unholy thoughts — way before he had tasted the sweetness of Renjun's lips and gotten lost in between the curves and angles of his body. His mind was a traitorous thing for having made him bend down and fall prey to a human's touch, longing for it so fiercely it made his previous human frame explode into tiny pieces, dust and golden flecks raining down around his bright, luminescent form.</p><p>"You are never thinking," Jaemin says. Renjun lets a disgruntled noise, nose scrunching up. "That's what you always say."</p><p>"Yeah, but then you're supposed to go all like <em>'oh no, it's not like that!'</em> and don't actually agree with me."</p><p>Jaemin tilts his head a little to the side. There's a lock of hair that is falling right on the middle of Renjun's forehead, so Jaemin brushes it to the side, letting his fingers slide down his face and rest on the curve of his neck. He feels like he needs to constantly be touching him. Feeling him under his fingertips. Understand how real everything is. "Yesterday you were staring outside of the window and dropped your glass full of water over yourself. You forget things constantly. You were not thinking then."</p><p>Renjun groans. "Don't remind me of that and still... that happens with everyone. I mean, <em>almost</em> everyone. We can't all have perfect memories like you, sorry. Have some mercy on us, poor humans."</p><p>"You humans do not deserve our mercy," Jaemins replies, eyes crinkling a bit at the corner. "Though, thinking better, maybe some of you do deserve a little bit of it."</p><p>"Would I be one of them?" Renjun asks, smiling sleepily. Jaemin can feel the thumping of his heartbeat underneath his fingers, the fragility of Renjun's essence right there — one move of his hand and Jaemin would be able to destroy him. "Somehow, I think I would. I'm good—I even attended church when I was a kid," Renjun jokes, huffing a little. "Were you my guardian angel, Jaem?"</p><p>Jaemin could explain all about angels and hierarchy, all about cherubins and guardian angels, and the warriors too. He could spend hours describing how they are, what they did, how everyone had their own tasks and didn't interfere with each other unless it was needed. But Renjun was just looking at him with a sleepy gaze, a soft smile, fondness in his voice that tells Jaemin he's just playing around and isn't in the mood for a lecture.</p><p>So Jaemin shakes his head. "No," he says. "I wasn't."</p><p>He imagines that, if he had met Renjun before, when he was a child, maybe things would have gone differently. Maybe he wouldn't have walked on that path. But Jaemin also knows that it doesn't matter to dwell on things that already happened; he couldn't change history.</p><p>But it had been adult-Renjun, bathed in neon colorful lights, that had grabbed his attention. Jaemin could only look at him as loud music made the ground underneath his feet shake, vision filled with the flickering rainbow lightning, senses overwhelmed with <em>too much</em> happening.</p><p>It was a new body, a new frame, and it was still hard to contain himself.</p><p>Adult-Renjun had bright eyes and sharp moves. He was just one more young man dancing in the middle of a crowd of people, and Jaemin wouldn't have looked twice if adult-Renjun hadn't wandered close to him, resting one hand at the back of his neck and bringing him down, whispering close to his ear, voice slurred from all the alcohol, "You're fucking glowing and I wanna kiss you right now."</p><p>Alcohol tasted bitter. Sometimes sour, sometimes a little sweet. But licking alcohol from inside a human's mouth made it taste like sin and Jaemin wanted nothing more than to continue chasing after that.</p><p>His descent was written in the curves of Renjun's body, hidden underneath his tongue, in the space between his fingers where his own would interlace so perfectly with Renjun's hand. A human's body wasn't made to feel all of that — Jaemin was sure of that; he was sure because he felt like burning and consuming everything around him.</p><p>Renjun looks at him and Jaemin wants to implode at the same time he wants to consume everything next to him, selfishly guarding all the feelings in a safe place behind his ribcage, tucked just around the corner. <em>Selfishly</em>. Just like a human would do.</p><p>"Your eyes are glowing again," Renjun comments, bringing Jaemin back to the present moment. "Are you thinking about me?" He asks, teasingly, biting down on a smile. "You always glow when you're mad or trying not to go all <em>'poof'</em> again."</p><p>"And why would I be thinking about you, then? If it is when I am mad?"</p><p>With Renjun's face close to his, heartbeat underneath his fingertips, Renjun is one of the most beautiful creatures Jaemin has ever seen. He can see a faint golden light reflected in Renjun's eyes until it vanishes away, feel the warm puffs of air that comes out of him.</p><p>"Baby," Renjun says, ignoring Jaemin's stare. A human with their small, insignificant years, talking down with a creature like him. Calling him baby. it was laughable, truly, and still—Jaemin trembles a little in his hold, feels the heat on the pit of his stomach crawling up to his throat. "You're always like this when it's about me too. I know how you feel, sweetheart. I know what I do with you."</p><p>For the first time, Renjun lifts his head from the pillow. Jaemin keeps his hand on the side of his neck, watching his every movement, watching how Renjun's gaze moves from his eyes to his lips before going up again.</p><p>"Do you?" Jaemin asks. "Do you really know how I feel? How it all just burns so much?"</p><p>Renjun makes a humming noise, shuffling closer to him. He rests on one elbow, lifting a hand to tug at a lock of Jaemin's hair and try to tuck it behind his ear. "Yes," he says, easily. Renjun's eyes are bright in the rising day, the stars leaving the night sky to reside in his gaze. "Because you make me feel like that too. My chest burns and it just goes through all over my body and it makes me feel all dizzy. <em>You</em> make me feel all dizzy."</p><p>"It's more than just <em>'dizzy'</em>," Jaemin says. "It's something all-consuming. All-encompassing. It devours you whole and leaves nothing behind, only an emptiness that needs to be filled again with something."</p><p>"With something..." Renjun drawls, thumb caressing the top of Jaemin's cheekbones. "Maybe a kiss?" He asks, cheekily, crossing the distance between them and pecking Jaemin quick on the lips.</p><p>Jaemin pulls him forward when Renjun makes to break apart, his hand on Renjun's neck feeling the heartbeat underneath quickening. He tastes sweet, he tastes like a dream, and yet he's there — Jaemin can feel him under the palm of his hands, can feel the sigh Renjun lets out against his mouth.</p><p>He tastes like a dream and that's why Renjun is dangerous, that's why they're advised to not meddle directly with the humans. Sin is the sweetness that coats Renjun's tongue, that creates the addiction inside of him to keep wanting more and more, licking inside Renjun's mouth to satiate a hunger that never is relinquished and only grows stronger and stronger.</p><p>Jaemin had already been toeing the line between what he wasn't supposed to do. <em>Too curious</em>, some had said. <em>Foolish</em>, others had whispered behind his back. And Renjun had only been the last thing needed to seal the deal; a look in dark eyes reflecting colorful lights and a mouth sweet with alcohol and Jaemin was doomed.</p><p>It makes his entire being ache — his existence, the lack of wings on his back, the fragility of the human body, Renjun's searing touch on his skin. It's a longing deep into his veins, brimming to the surface every other day, begging to be released into the wild around him, to destroy everything and everyone that was next to him; the holiness inside of him pleading to escape from a mortal carcass.</p><p>But it's a holiness faded to ruins.</p><p>Jaemin ignores the calls that ring around him every time he looks up at the sky and feels the invisible weight of the wings that used to carry him around; he ignores the sensation that clings to his skin in his every waking moment, reminding him of the stain in his being.</p><p>Is it really corruption when it feels so right? Is it really a taint in his divineness when Renjun only looks at him with soft eyes and wants nothing but to be loved back?</p><p>His body and mind burn all the time with the reminder of what he could be. And there isn't a permanent remedy to that — but Renjun's touches and kisses burn in a different way, bringing a temporary cure to all the ache he feels inside.</p><p>And it's enough at the moment.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>come find me on <a href="https://twitter.com/pinkhrj">twt</a> | <a href="https://curiouscat.me/rensungie">ccat</a> &lt;3<br/>(plz just interact with me if u are +18 thanks)</p></blockquote></div></div>
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